1 Ficino Is Dealt With at Greater Length in Chapter XIII
[2] The Cabala was, as I have tried to make clear, only one of the influences which produced this new intellectual climate. The rediscovered “Hermes Trismegistus,” the mystically coloured Platonism, as it came from Italy, the awakened interest in Nature and in man, and the powerful message of the German Mystics all played an important part toward the formation of the new Weltanschauung.
[3] Three Books of Occult Philosophy, translated by J. F. (London, 1651).
[4] Stoddart’s Life of Paracelsus (London, 1911), p. 76.
[5] Browning, Paracelsus, B. i. This passage fairly represents Paracelsus’ general position. “There is,” he says in his Philosophia sagax, “a Light in the spirit of man which illuminates everything.... The quality of each thing created by God, whether it be visible or invisible to the senses, may be perceived and known. If man knows the essence of things, their attributes, their attractions, and the elements of which they consist, he will be a Master of nature, of the elements, and of the spirits.”
[6] Christliches Gespraech, chap. iii.
[7] There is an excellent critical study of Weigel’s writings by A. Israel, entitled, Weigels Leben und Schriften nach den Quellen dargestellt (Zschopau, 1888).
[8] “Of the Life of Christ, That is, Of True Faith which is the Rule, Square, Levell or Measuring Line of the Holy City of God and of the Inhabitants thereof here on Earth. Written in the German Language by Valentine Weigelus.” (London, Giles Calvert, 1648.)
[9] Quoted from Israel, op. cit. p. 107.
[10] On the Life of Christ, part i. chap. ii.
[11] On the Life of Christ, part i. chap. iii.
[12] Ibid. part i. chap. viii.
[13] On the Life of Christ, part i. chap. ix.
[14] Ibid. part ii. chap. ix.; part i. chap. x.; part ii. chap. x.; and part. i. chap. xiv.
[15] Ibid. part ii. chaps. iii. and iv.
[16] This is the view set forth in his [Greek] Gnothi Seauton [Know Thyself].
[17] On the Life of Christ, part ii. chaps. v. and vii.
[18] Ibid. part i. chap. viii.
[19] Vom himmlischen Jerusalem in uns, chap. viii.
[20] Weigel enjoins his readers to read Franck’s book on “the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” See On the Life of Christ, part ii. p. 57.
[21] “Faith,” he says, “cannot be forced into any person by gallows or pillory.” On the Life of Christ, part i. chap. xv.
[22] Ibid. part ii. chap. xiv. This is built on a passage in Franck’s Apologia.
[23] On the Life of Christ, part i. chaps. iv. and v.
[24] Ibid. part i. chap. vi.
[25] Ibid. part i. chaps. xii. and xiii.
[26] Quoted from Tauler by Weigel, ibid. chap. vii. See also part iii. chap. i.
[27] Ibid. part ii. chap. ii.
[28] Op. cit. chap. xx.
[29] Christ. Gespraech, chap. ii.
[30] In his Der gueldene Griff, he tells of a personal spiritual “opening” which is very similar to the one which occurred later in the life of Boehme. He found himself astray in “a wilderness of darkness” and he cried to God for Light to enlighten his soul. “Suddenly,” he says, “the Light came and my eyes were opened so that I saw more clearly than all the teachers in all the world with all their books could teach me.” Chap. xxiv.
[31] Astrologie Theologized, p. 8.
[32] Ibid. pp. 16-17.
[33] This little book refers with much appreciation to Theophrastus Paracelsus. It uses his theory of “first matter” and his doctrine of “the seven governours of the world,” which we shall meet in a new form in Boehme. Another book which carried astrological ideas into religious thought in a much cruder way was Andreas Tentzel’s De ratione naturali arboris vitae et scientiae boni et mali, etc., which was Pars Secunda of his Medicinii diastatica (Jena, 1629). It was translated into English in 1657 by N. Turner with the title: “The Mumial Treatise of Tentzelius, being a natural account of the Tree of Life and of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, with a mystical interpretation of that great Secret, to wit, the Cabalistical Concordance of the Tree of Life and Death, of Christ and Adam.” Tentzel was a famous doctor and disciple of Paracelsus and “flourished” in Germany during the first half of the seventeenth century.
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